Muscle and Fitness Hers interview

The following is an extract from the question-and-answer session with writer Kayla Hutzler:

For you, personally, what's the hardest part of being a professional tennis player?
I love tennis and I love travelling, so really this is the perfect job for me! But no job is perfect, not even tennis, and sometimes the travelling can get a little tiring: you miss home and you miss your family. But overall I don’t complain. I really love to compete.

With training, how many hours do you a spend a day in the gym and on the court?
It really varies, depending how close to a tournament I am. The off-season, in November and December, is the most intense training period, and in many ways it sets you up for the year ahead. During this time I will have three sessions per day: at the beginning, two fitness sessions and one tennis, then later on it will be two tennis and one fitness.

During the season, but away from a tournament, it can be similar, but the emphasis is still on tennis, as my coach and I work on some improvements. Still, there will be a few weeks where I do more fitness than tennis.

For the gym work I always find it important to keep things varied, so often I am not in the gym at all: maybe we are cycling through some parks, swimming, running or evening surfing. I love the outdoors.

What does a typical workout for you?
There is no “typical” workout really because we are working on so many different areas, on and off the court. In the gym we will work on strength, endurance, speed and flexibility – sometimes just one of these elements, and sometimes we combine them.

One gym session may look like this: 5-10 minutes warm-up on the treadmill, then we’ll do some high intensity cardio, 20 seconds of running at high speeds and getting the heart rate up, then ‘resting’ for up to a 30-60 seconds at jogging pace. After completing a few sets of that we may work on some postural and stabilising exercises for the back, shoulders and core, using Swiss and medicine balls. We’ll also do some lunges and squats.